SOFTWARE OUTSOURCING

It looks like software outsourcing is the way to go because over the past few years, we’ve been bombarded with news of Offshoring and outsourced call centers, testing, software development outsourcing, projects, and entire IT infrastructures. Think and ask a question to yourself, what’s the value of the knowledge your staff members learn in the work that planning to outsource? Think before jumping on the outsourcing bandwagon because where you give up new value while software outsourcing.

If you are thinking of offshore outsourcing, then remember these points before opting for that:

1) First of all assign one of the best project employees as your internal project manager. It is required because there is a project manager at the outsourcer which doesn’t mean you don’t need someone at your place making sure all the appropriate handoffs are happening.

2) While Software outsourcing, qualifying the vendor is also that much important. Much like in other outsourcing industries like outsourcing call centers, outsourcing manufacturing work or any other outsourcing work you have to check out whether the vendor has domain knowledge or not, and whether is it financially viable in the future. And one more thing is there contractual safeguards in place to keep control over the intellectual property you give it?

3) The basic requirement from your side while Software outsourcing is to train the IT staff. It is required that the staff needs to know how the product works, both from the internals and from the perspective of knowing the problems while clients want to solve them.

4) If you don’t require shifting enough people to work earlier or later in the day, plan for your in-house staff to shift their work hours by themselves. Because someone across the world who has a problem won’t have someone to talk to that at that time. Too often, it would happen when an engineer at least eight time zones away needs information.

5) If you have Software Development Outsourcing occurring in multiple sites around the world, develop an appropriate process that requires a clear change process to make only the changes that are allowed.

6) Selection of Software Outsourcing projects with nonvolatile requirements because the requirements change frequently and needed to check out the evolving product with the user, development across the world makes it that much harder.

7) Especially at the beginning of a Software Outsourcing relationship, plan for each project to take longer and cost more. Then monitoring the project to see if there is a need to increase that estimate in the future.

8) Make sure you have the tools, information systems, and processes support for the outsourced teams.

9) Verify that the people who said they would be working on the project are the ones actually working on that. U.S. firms have been using the bait-and-switch approach to contracting for many years. If you don’t verify who’s working on your project, the project could be the learning ground for their staff to build their careers.

For better efficiency insist that the software development company keep the same team for your project’s duration. And the documentation list that is necessary for this process otherwise, the time you spent training their people is wasted and you’ll have to start the training process again for Offshore Outsourcing.